Interred with the Bones
by Emily-Of-Midgard
Summary: Life and Death are set points. It's what happens between those set points that makes a great story. And the great stories aren't always good ones, nor happy. And Watson never hid from a great story, though the story of Reichenbach is not happy. Nor is the story of James Moriarty, but it also has to be told. Because like Reichebach, we don't know the start, but we know how it ends.


_"The evil that men do lives after them, the good is oft interred with their bones."- Julius Caesar, Act III, scene ii._

* * *

_It is said that you can always tell the way a man lived and what people thought of him by the way his funeral is attended._

_It is also said that it always rains at funerals._

The sun beat down on the heads of the mourners, the few there were that is. It was a stifling day, quite uncommon for an English summer. Most of the mourners shifted uncomfortably under all their black clothes and nobody's mind was on the sermon itself. They were all thinking about fleeing into the cooler manor house.

The black casket was empty.

They had found a body, or what remained of a body. The bones had made it over the Channel and had actually lain in the Scotland Yard morgue for a few days. But as soon as the funeral was planned and everything was in place, it was reported that a mysterious occurrence had happened. A thief had stolen the corpse. The funeral went on, as according to plan, but when all was said and done, there would be an empty grave in the Moriarty family graveyard.

It wouldn't be the first.

The woman at the front showed no signs of discomfort. Her veil was pushed away from her face and over her head, revealing her pale face to the group of mourners. It was a well known fact that the woman who lived with the Moriarty family rarely left the manor house. In fact, most of the mourners had never seen her at all. Most just assumed the master of the house was unmarried and when they realized he _was,_ the scandal around the woman had grown. If people were being honest, she was probably one of the reasons they attended at all but people were rarely honest so they simply stared at her and the small boy at her side.

Behind her stood three girls, their ages varying from older to younger twenties. The three sisters all looked alike with their black hair and cold grey eyes. They were all pointedly staring at the empty coffin before them. If anyone had been observing them, they would have noticed that none of them, not even one, spared a glance at anything else, not even the freshly turned dirt of the grave next to the open hole. They weren't here for that.

The priest ended his sermon as quickly as possible. In fact, he seemed relieved to step down. There was a moment or two of silence and then a powerful man stood up. He was muscled where his brother had not been, built like a military man. Colonel Moriarty walked up to the pulpit and stood there for a minute, trying to collect his thoughts. They all stood in silence.

Then, he spoke. "Ladies and gentlemen, I thank you for coming from the bottom of my heart. we gather here today to bury my brother. He was born on…"

* * *

_When he thought about it, he didn't have a birthday._

_He was just a child when he realized the reason he never had a birthday party. He began research into calendars and he realized that he was born on February 29th, 1832. A leap year only came every four years. 'Why bother with a celebration!?' His father said. He just shrugged. He was too occupied with math to care._

* * *

"And he died on…"

* * *

_The roar of the falls filled his ears. He could feel it thundering under his feet, as if it was reflecting his own emotions. He didn't need to scream at the detective as he attacked. No, he remained silent. The falls spoke for him._

_The falls could be his last words._

* * *

"He was…," Colonel James Peter Moriarty said and he paused again. He was uncertain of what to exactly say. "He was a brother, a husband, a father…"

* * *

"The criminal!"

"The leader!"

"The _professor!"_

* * *

"He was an intelligent man. One of the best when it came to mathematics. When it came to his work, he was the best…"

* * *

_"If there a crime to be done, a paper to be abstracted, we will say, a house to be riﬂed, a man to be removed—the word is passed to the Professor, the matter is organized and carried out…"_

* * *

"He was almost indescribable…"

* * *

_"He's the Napoleon of Crime, Watson!"_

* * *

"And everyone would be wise to remember," The Colonel said, giving everyone a cold look that made people shudder. It wasn't exactly the look that scared them, more who he looked like when he made that face. "That he did a lot for science and history, as well as this area. People would be wise…" He trailed off at the end, realize his attempt to defend his brother was futile. He shrugged almost unnoticeably and left the pulpit. He had done what he could. His brother was on his own now.

The priest stepped forward again as the pallbearers took their positions at the casket. They had all born a coffin before and they all managed to keep a straight face as they bore the empty box to its final resting place.

The priest stood over the grave. He read from the Bible in a calm, steady voice as the family members tossed in dirt from the pile next to the grave. All the mourners stood watching as the woman tossed in the last handful with almost a vindictive look. She spun away from the grave, her son's hand clenched tightly in her own.

"Ashes to ashes…" The priest began to drawl.

_Every story and life has a beginning._

"Dust to dust." He said, casting a nervous look at the barely covered coffin.

_Every life and story has an end._

"May God have mercy on the soul…" He faltered.

_Life and death is simply a fact of existing. They're commonplace. It's what's in the middle that's interesting. It's the story on how one goes from the beginning to the end. That's what matters._

"May God have mercy on the soul of James John Moriarty." He finished simply and he and the mourners turned their backs and allowed the gravediggers to put the past to rest.

* * *

AN- I've always wanted to try my hand at writing a Professor Moriarty story and…well, here's my attempt. There's parts of this I really like but there's other parts where…eh. There's also way too many pagebreaks but I couldn't think of a way to get the inturrupted sort of feeling I wanted without them. There won't be so many next chapter. You be the judge. Thank you for reading and please review! Oh, and have a Happy New Year!


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